The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

If a cylinder looks damaged with broken plaster of paris interior, color stripes, or chips and cracks should they just be thrown away?
Thanks

Nope.

There are several ways that a cylinder can become unusable, for each type.

The 2-minute wax ones can get mold spots or even be completely covered with them. Sometimes they are still at least partially playable, and may contain something of interest. You can find home recordings that reveal interesting snippets through the mold, for example. Beware cracks and deep pits, which can chip away your stylus, though. And if the mold is too severe, you can still retain the brown (not black) wax cylinders to be shaved and reused as recording blanks.

People have over the last few decades built an urban legend about the 4-minute wax cylinders as aggressively fragile things of little importance, ready to self-destruct if you breathe on them or look at them funny. This is hogwash. Just be smart and take care of them properly (no rapid temperature changes or rough handling), and they will be fine. Somehow they have managed to survive over 100 years already, by the way - how could that be? The payoff is worth it - they can sound amazingly good. You will sometimes find them with a surface haze that looks scary, like mold - and disappears as the record is played, and has no sonic impact. Cracks are a stylus hazard and make the record more delicate of course, so just be careful and don’t play the cracked parts.

4-minute celluloid blue amberols are way more durable but don’t be rough with them.
- Loss of plaster is normal and unless it’s severe won’t affect play. If the record wobbles on the mandrel try shimming it with folded paper.
- Plaster can also swell so that the record doesn’t fit on the mandrel properly. Some people use tapered reamers on such records, but this is not the best practice. You will get a nice smooth interior opening that isn’t concentric to the outer surface, and the result is wobbly sound (flutter) that you can’t fix. The best way is to take a flat edged knife and carve down the high spots in the plaster. They are easy to see - shiny and darker in color. You have to spend a little bit more time, carving and testing and carving some more, but it’s the right fix.
- plaster loss/swelling can also lead to cracks in the celluloid, and unless they’re really bad you can usually avoid them when playing the record.

Generally you shouldn’t make a practice of throwing away cylinders, except for the wax ones that you have dropped on the floor and shattered or left in the sun and cracked, or found in multiple pieces inside their boxes.

Give or sell them to someone who wants them instead. This is all independent of content, which is being addressed on your other thread.

Thank you for the feedback.

We will set them aside for now. If there is anybody who would like to be informed when we have a box of them, let me know here or in a PM.